Ruta Sepetys’ work has inspired many across the world to seek out stories from others. Her first book, “Between Shades of Gray,” which tells the story of Lithuanian deportation to Siberia by the Soviets, has inspired staff and students at Montgomery Bell Academy and St. Cecilia Academy to seek out stories from afar. For the fifth consecutive year, Montgomery Bell Academy’s Emmett Russell has coordinated an exchange program with students from Lithuania.

EVENTS

Young Professionals Luncheon. This event is tailored for ambitious individuals who are interested in furthering their leadership aspirations, cultivate relationships and grow professionally. The luncheon is an excellent opportunity to network, connect and learn from some of the most experienced business leaders. WCAR, 1646 Westgate Circle, Suite 104. Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Members: $20, Nonmembers: $30. Information

Standing on the open terrace outside the location of Roger Miller’s private suite next to The Roof, the Vegas-styled club atop his King of the Road Motor Inn, I look back in time and, dang me, I both wonder where it all went and celebrate that I can remember.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's House speaker pushed back Wednesday against calls to abandon his top legislative leadership post from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, releasing a plan intended to restore trust in his office.

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court has rejected an appeal from the lawyers of Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn over bail conditions that forbid him to contact his wife, as a prosecutor defended the restriction as needed to prevent evidence tampering.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and Chinese negotiators are to resume trade talks Thursday just hours before the United States is set to raise tariffs on Chinese imports in a dramatic escalation of tensions between the world's two biggest economies.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese exporters of all sorts of products, from power adapters and computers to vacuum cleaners, are anxiously hoping trade talks in Washington this week will yield a deal that might stave off higher U.S. tariffs on imports from China.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the Democrats' extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia report .

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate intelligence committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., calling him in to answer questions about his 2017 testimony to the panel as part of its probe into Russian election interference.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's House speaker on Tuesday said he was wrong to participate in lewd conversations about women with his former chief of staff and described the language as "locker room talk" between adult men.

CANTON, Ohio (AP) — A poem that hung in Kevin Mawae's locker is among more than 200 items he's donated to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with many to be displayed this summer as part of an exhibit featuring Mawae as a member of the Class of 2019.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google announced new privacy tools Tuesday intended to give people more control over how they're being tracked on the go or in their own home, part of a broader effort by big tech companies to counter increasing scrutiny of their data collection practices.

WASHINGTON (AP) — TV pitches for prescription drugs will soon include the price, giving consumers more information upfront as they make medication choices at a time when new drugs can carry anxiety-inducing prices.

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart said Wednesday that it will raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products and e-cigarettes at its U.S. stores to 21 amid growing pressure from regulators to cut tobacco sales and use among minors.

NEW YORK (AP) — Some drivers for ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft turned off their apps Wednesday to protest what they say are declining wages at a time when both companies are raking in billions of dollars from investors.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the Democrats' extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House invoked executive privilege Wednesday, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report from special counsel Robert Mueller on his Trump-Russia probe and escalating the battle between President Donald Trump and Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump ordered new sanctions on Iran Wednesday, just days after the U.S. dispatched an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf over what it described as a new threat from Tehran .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal privacy regulators got a sympathetic hearing from Congress on Wednesday for their request for greater powers and funding to police privacy, as lawmakers warned that fines against big companies may be inadequate to change their conduct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged taking massive tax write offs for real estate losses topping $1 billion from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, calling it "sport" among developers like himself during that period.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former White House lawyer defied a congressional subpoena Tuesday, setting the Trump administration on course for another collision with the Democratic-led House over its pursuit of documents related to the Russia investigation.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's House speaker on Tuesday said he was wrong to participate in lewd conversations about women with his former chief of staff and described the language as "locker room talk" between adult men.

NASHVILLE (AP) — The Republican Tennessee House speaker's chief of staff resigned Monday amid allegations that he sent sexually explicit and racist text messages, and after admitting he used cocaine inside a legislative office building when he held a previous job.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s environment program is warning about the overuse of sand resources, saying a three-fold increase in demand over the last 20 years amid increasing population, urbanization and building work has contributed to beach erosion, flooding and drought.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — BMW lost money making cars in the first quarter as its automotive division was hit by a 1.4 billion-euro ($1.6 billion) set-aside for an anti-trust fine from the European Commission and by higher up-front costs for new technology and factories.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off the company's annual developer conference Tuesday with updates to Google's artificially intelligent voice assistant. It will get a series of updates this year, including one that lets it book rental cars and movie tickets.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The NFL concussion fund has paid out nearly $500 million in its first two years, but some players' lawyers say there aren't enough doctors in the approved network to evaluate dementia claims.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's Economy Department says U.S. consumers could pay 38% to 70% more for tomatoes after the U.S. Commerce Department announced it would re-impose anti-dumping duties on Mexican imports.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The prime minister of Iraq says he has instructed his country's Oil Ministry to finalize an agreement with global energy giants ExxonMobil and PetroChina to lead a $53 billion megaproject to boost oil production.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Union's executive arm has trimmed its forecasts for eurozone economic growth this year and next as uncertainty over trade conflicts and weakness in the auto industry hold back output.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Theresa May faced renewed pressure Tuesday from lawmakers in her Conservative Party to abandon efforts to seek a Brexit compromise deal with the opposition Labour Party.

NEW DELHI (AP) — U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday that American technologies and expertise could play an important role in developing India's economy, but were facing significant barriers to accessing its markets.

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Chris Wray said Tuesday that he does not consider court-approved FBI surveillance to be "spying" and said he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored President Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 election.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former White House lawyer defied a congressional subpoena Tuesday, setting the Trump administration on course for another collision with the Democratic-led House over its pursuit of documents related to the Russia investigation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee is poised to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress — the opening salvo in what could be a lengthy, acrimonious court battle between House Democrats and President Donald Trump's administration over special counsel Robert Mueller's report .

NEW YORK (AP) — New York and New Jersey want to know how the Internal Revenue Service decided to stop requiring donor information from certain nonprofit organizations — among them big political spenders.

Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and more transparent with open-source software. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the software into their voting systems.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian airliner that took off from Moscow was airborne for just 28 minutes before returning to make an emergency landing while still heavy with unburned fuel, which then ignited after a rough touchdown.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The SSJ100 passenger jet that caught fire during an emergency landing in Moscow is part of Russia's effort to maintain a presence in civil aviation in a market dominated by companies like Boeing, Airbus and Embraer.

Boeing said Sunday that it discovered after airlines had been flying its 737 Max plane for several months that a safety alert in the cockpit was not working as intended, yet it didn't disclose that fact to airlines or federal regulators until after one of the planes crashed.

Norah O'Donnell will become anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News" and Gayle King is getting two new morning show co-hosts as CBS News seeks to boost the programs' ratings and put a tumultuous, scandal-scarred period behind it.

BEIJING (AP) — By threatening to raise taxes on Chinese imports, President Donald Trump is throwing down a challenge to Beijing: Agree to sweeping changes in China's government-dominated economic model — or suffer the consequences.

In what could be a grim preview of how investors might react to a full-out trade war between the world's two largest economies, shares in multinational corporations sank Monday after President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on China.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration plans to allow 30,000 more foreign workers temporarily into the United States for seasonal work through the end of September, a move that reflects how the booming economy has complicated President Donald Trump's efforts to restrict legal immigration.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 400 former federal prosecutors have signed onto a letter saying President Donald Trump would have been charged with obstruction of justice if he were anyone other than the president.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller was expected to step down days after concluding his investigation in March. Yet he remains a Justice Department employee — and the department won't say why.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee is poised to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress — the opening salvo in what could be a lengthy, acrimonious court battle between House Democrats and President Donald Trump's administration over special counsel Robert Mueller's report .

WASHINGTON (AP) — They're talking at the Capitol about jailing people. Imposing steep fines. All sorts of extraordinary, if long-shot measures to force the White House to comply with Democratic lawmakers' request for information about President Donald Trump stemming from the special counsel's Russia investigation.

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen took a last swipe at President Donald Trump as he reported to a federal prison Monday to begin a three-year prison sentence for crimes including tax evasion and campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments made to protect his former boss.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill Thursday that would offer new concealed carry-only handgun permits that don't require training that involves actually firing a weapon, highlighting the final decisions of a frenzied last day of a monthslong legislative session.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's governor signed GOP-backed legislation Thursday that would likely make his state the first to fine voter registration groups for turning in too many incomplete signup forms, prompting a federal lawsuit and protests by critics who said it would suppress efforts to register minorities and other voters.

NASHVILLE (AP) — It will be up to Republican Gov. Bill Lee to decide whether Tennessee will start offering a concealed carry-only handgun permit that doesn't require training that includes actually firing a weapon.

NASHVILLE (AP) — More than 1,000 Nashville public school teachers were absent on Friday, but no one seemed to be taking credit for an action the school district called a "'sick out' demonstration designed to bring awareness to teacher pay."

KNOXVILLE (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Tennessee Valley Authority can be sued over its commercial activity. But it left a lower court to decide whether the case of an Alabama man injured by a power line can proceed.

MILAN (AP) — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles says it has completed the sale of components maker Magneti Marelli to Japanese supplier Calsonic Kansei, allowing a special dividend to shareholders for the first time in a decade.

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — A week after revealing a huge first quarter loss and the need to raise cash, Tesla is doing just that with CEO Elon Musk buying $10 million in new shares being offered as part of a stock and debt offering that could raise more than $2 billion.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — German automaker Volkswagen saw its profit slip in the first quarter as the company set aside 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) for legal risks related to its 2015 diesel scandal.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — In the days before Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, classrooms and hotel meeting rooms around Omaha fill up with investors eager to learn more about the philosophy Warren Buffett used to build his fortune.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a robust 263,000 jobs in April, suggesting that businesses have shrugged off earlier concerns that the economy might slow this year and now anticipate strong customer demand.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stephen Moore, a conservative commentator whom President Donald Trump had tapped for the Federal Reserve board, withdrew from consideration Thursday after losing Republican support in the Senate, largely over his past inflammatory writings about women.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. productivity grew at a solid 3.6% rate in the first three months of this year, the strongest quarterly gain in more than four years and a hopeful sign that a long stretch of weak productivity gains may be coming to an end.

LONDON (AP) — The British economy will weaken in the near-term as firms ease up on Brexit preparations now that the country's departure from the European Union has been delayed by months, the Bank of England said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin discussed what Trump again dismissed as the "Russian Hoax" in their first known phone call since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election meddling. Putin chuckled about Mueller's findings, Trump said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr portrayed himself as an apolitical elder statesman at his confirmation hearing. He declared he'd rather resign than be asked to fire special counsel Robert Mueller without cause and insisted the prosecutor he'd known for decades would never involve himself in a witch hunt as the president claimed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled House approved a bill Thursday that would prevent President Donald Trump from fulfilling his pledge to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement and ensure the U.S. honors its commitments under the global accord.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The No. 2 House Republican leader is suggesting that Congress won't agree to the full $2 trillion price tag that the White House and congressional leaders have discussed for a compromise infrastructure deal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr skipped a House hearing Thursday on special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia report, escalating an already acrimonious battle between Democrats and President Donald Trump's Justice Department.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will begin a push Thursday to fight health care sticker shock by limiting "surprise medical bills," the unexpected charges faced by insured patients when a member of a health care team that treated them is considered an out-of-network provider.

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